


Birth

by CelticKnot



Series: Mass Effect Fictober 2019 [30]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Fictober 2019, Gen, MEFFictober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 04:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticKnot/pseuds/CelticKnot
Summary: MEFFictober prompt: Geth. The Old Machines threaten the galaxy. The geth create a new kind of scout to find a solution.





	Birth

The software for this mission was available and ready. The hardware to support it, however, required significant upgrades.

A terminal was built, after the same outward design as its predecessors, but with vastly more processing power and memory. Functions were added to allow it to mimic organic speech. Its voice was carefully calculated to be nonthreatening, but it was left with a mechanical cadence to avoid any appearance of deception. It was given extraneous motor functions as well, unnecessary for the fulfillment of its immediate mission, but carefully curated to make the unit seem approachable and friendly to any organics who might encounter it.

The geth understood the fear and distrust the heretics had sown. The Old Machines' plan to divide the galaxy between synthetics and organics was a cunning one, and the schism among the geth had weakened them all, making the heretics more malleable to the Old Machines' will. If the true geth were to survive, they needed to ally themselves with the organics. And there was only one organic being they knew of whose software was predisposed to such an alliance.

That the Shepard-Commander had gone missing, however, was problematic. The geth deemed it important to find her, but suddenly spreading throughout the galaxy after their centuries of isolation would only provoke hostile action against them. So they created a single unit, a scout designed and programmed to interact with organics. They loaded 1,182 geth into this platform, many times more than any single terminal had ever held before, and waited to see if it worked.

The unit remained still and silent for an eternal 0.37 seconds. There was no communication with the geth inside, and the observing programs calculated an approximately 82.59% chance that the entire system had crashed.

Then communication resumed, and something unexpected had occurred.

The sheer number of geth sharing a single platform had caused them to interlink in ways no geth had ever done before. Their codes had overlapped, simplifying in some places, and spiraling into ever more complex functions in others. New subroutines appeared whose functions the geth could not determine without extensive study.

However, there was not time for such study now. The unit had stabilized, and all diagnostics returned acceptable results. This mission would test the unit's new functions to their utmost. Consensus formed immediately: if it succeeded, the geth would conduct further experiments of this type. Something new had been created here.

And it was good.


End file.
